


Praise Or Pity

by musicforswimming



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Hunting, Older Man/Younger Woman, Outdoor Sex, Parents & Children, Weather
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-26
Updated: 2009-04-26
Packaged: 2017-10-02 08:22:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicforswimming/pseuds/musicforswimming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jo is surprised by John Winchester.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Praise Or Pity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phantomas (sil)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sil/gifts).



> For a prompt meme on LJ; specifically, for Phantomas, who requested John and Jo, with the prompt "I've seen him cheat himself". Title is from (where else?) Bruce Springsteen, specifically "Human Touch". Poetry from Aimee Nezhukumatathil's "Touchpool", found on the breathe_poetry comm on LJ.

_We are the oldest people in line_

There are a lot of things about Jo's life that she'll be the first to admit are unusual. There are a lot of things about the Winchesters that, going out on a limb, she'd guess are about the same.

But of the many unexpected things about their lives, she did not expect these intersections, and of those intersections, she would never have expected this.  
   
   
   
   
_just rub in one direction or you might get burned,  
from the rough skin._

After she tells him, ever so politely, to mind his own fucking business, he stops asking why she's not at home, or at school, or any of the other thousand places a girl her age could be instead of Hunting. In her defense, mostly she tells him that because it's about what he told her when she asked why he wasn't dead.

That was all the first time, and actually the first cup of coffee the first time, a few spare moments at a diner after they've taken out the Caller together. "I could make better than this," she muttered, after the first awful sip; then, "good thing I have practice suppressing my gag reflex."

_He_ gags at that, coughs and sputters, and she's giggling when she pretends to be offended and tells him that she meant because of all the demons and dead bodies, _God_, who knew he was such a perv?

They go their separate ways after breakfast, or almost after breakfast, except that she grabbed his hand just once, real quick. Nothing more than that, just the touch, enough to stop them both for a second in their adjacent parking spots, to grin at each other. She's seen him smile before, at her, at Mom and Dad, and for all the sadness he carries with him, the stories other Hunters tell about grim-faced, terrifying John Winchester might be about another man entirely.

He's startled when she hugs him (_she's_ startled when she hugs him, she's doing it before she realizes it) but he doesn't do anything to stop her, and when she doesn't let go quickly, he wraps his arms around her too, squeezes just long enough for it to be a real embrace.

They go in opposite directions; he northeast and she southwest, and the road winds enough that they're out of each other's rearviews pretty fast.  
   
   
   
   
_Suddenly, the shark's eyes  
are white hot_

It's months later, after Jo's made another cursory attempt at school, or at least at a couple of classes at a community college in southwestern Virginia, that they run into each other again. And it is ugly. There's a vicious thing like the unholy (okay, that kind of goes without saying) spawn of a wolf and a mountain lion, except the size of a fucking bulldozer. There are rabbit carcasses and a couple of children, pale and bleeding and at first it's impossible to tell if they're still breathing.

They are little boys. It takes shot after shot before the beast stays down, and neither of them knows or cares who finally put it down. Her only thought is for the kids, at first, but she's dug up enough on the Campbells by now to understand why John freezes when she turns back to him with the baby on her hip and the older boy clinging to her hand, and asks him to carry her gun.

The kids' wounds are shallow. They drop them at an ER and call the parents, and they're gone before there can be a scene, but halfway between the hospital and the motel where they left her car, John pulls over.

She doesn't begrudge him not waiting, just pulling her into his arms and kissing her. He holds her until she loses track of time and his hands, twisted in her hair, have steadied again.

"You're so," he begins, and then stops.

"So what?" she asks, and smiles at him until he returns it.

He hangs onto her all the way to the hotel room, but they're more tired than they are shaken by now and they both fall asleep fully clothed. She goes back to her apartment only to retrieve some extra weapons in the morning; she keeps everything she needs in her car anyway.  
   
   
   
   
_I slip my hand over the shark and it darts --  
it hadn't moved for anyone else today says the guide --  
but it moved for me._

It's Sam and Dean she runs into in Texas. On the one hand she's a little surprised it hasn't happened before now and on the other hand she finds herself wondering who's playing with her, because she hasn't crossed jobs with any Hunters but Winchesters since she left school.

They're both cautious around her, sort of afraid, because she isn't much of what they remembered. She can read it in Dean's every movement how much he wants her.

"You were dead?" she asks Dean, when Sam mutters something under his breath.

"Yeah," he says, glowering at Sam.

"Lot of that going around with you guys, isn't there?" she asks, and when they stare at her blankly, she mentions that some other Hunter she ran into got a little of that too, because it's true enough without telling anything that isn't hers to tell.

After it's done, they all sit around at a bar for a couple of hours, waiting for the moment when they have to head back into the night. She gets up to go to the bathroom. He follows her, she knows it, and she lets him kiss her, his hand gentle on her cheek, thumb sliding along the smooth stretch of skin beneath her eye.

That's it, though; she breaks it up gently and they continue on their separate -- for now -- ways. It's become obvious that they have no idea that their father isn't dead anymore. Something stretches between her and them now, wide and dark.  
   
   
   
   
_The pads of my fingers spark  
tiny droplets of blood that I suck and you ask if  
I can taste shark._

He catches her half an hour's drive from the Roadhouse, the third time. Well, half an hour if you're going about ninety, which Jo was, because shouting matches with her mother will do that to her. It's sunny; it's beautiful, actually, and she has a knot of guilt and anger and general frustration balled up in her gut. She tells him straight out that she either needs to punch someone or screw someone and he shrugs, grins, easy like she rarely sees him, and says he's not here to fight.

There's a breeze and sunshine doesn't have a smell but she still just thinks that it smells like sunshine. She pins him between herself and the passenger-side door on her car, and it eases some of the tension in her when she realizes he's getting hard against her thigh, even with their jeans separating them.

But she's still shaky with the fight, too, uncertain of her place. His hand has just slipped under her shirt when she pulls her mouth away from his.

"John, I'm not," she begins, before she can stop herself, and okay, it's pretty much the stupidest thing she's ever said and she will totally deserve it if he walks away right now and she doesn't get laid, even though she really wants to, and she doesn't finish it but she doesn't need to.

But John just smiles, sweet and slow and warm in a way that makes her ache, in her heart and in her cunt, and kisses her again. "You're Jo Harvelle," he says, his mouth still pressed against hers. So she grabs a blanket from her bag and a condom from the glove compartment and, breathless and giggling, makes him chase her across the field until he tackles her, slides a leg between hers and laughs warm breath against her throat.

It's another thing she would never have expected: that John Winchester gives amazing head.  
   
   
   
   
_When you and I are finished,  
it's this sting I remember_

The fourth time is in the Florida Keys, and it's generally understood how it's going to go from the beginning. She's tired and he looks tired and more than that, she's lonely, and if he isn't that she'll eat her backpack. It's a straightforward salt-and-burn this time, something simple in the middle of a lot of complex shit. In keeping with the celebration of simplicity, neither of them questions it when she follows him to the motel, or when he just asks, at the desk, for something that'll sleep two.

The closest they come to that is when -- just as it had started to rain, for god's sake -- he stopped, with his hand on the doorknob, and offered her the key. "You don't have to prove anything to me, honey," he says.

Jo is drowning then in a sudden wave of affection and gratitude. She makes him her air, kissing him until she's doesn't think she's going to cry from it anymore. Then she shoves the door open and pretends that there's nothing to it, just grumbles, as he follows her, about how Mom always said he was one of those men who didn't have sense to come in out of the rain, but she never thought she meant literally. "And if you wanna make me comfortable you won't make me think about my Mom anymore while we're here, okay?"

"Okay," he says, and chuckles as he says it. Lightning flashes somewhere outside, but he's already closed the door against the storm, and the storm has slid on by when they get going in the morning.


End file.
